Inspirational Quotes on Contentment

“Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.”

“It is not simply that God has arbitrarily made us such that He is our only good. Rather God is the only good of all creatures: and by necessity, each must find its good in that kind and degree of fruition of God which is proper to its nature. The kind and degree may vary with the creature's nature: but that there ever could be any other good, is an atheistic dream. George Macdonald, in a passage I cannot now find, represents God as saying to men, 'You must be strong with my strength and blessed with my blessedness, for I have no other to give you.' That is the conclusion of the whole matter. God gives what He has, not what He has not: He gives the happiness that there is, not the happiness that is not. To be God - to be like God and to share His goodness in creaturely response - to be miserable - these are the only three alternatives. If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows - that only food that any possible universe ever can grow - then we must starve eternally.”

“Ah! If you have a self-will in your hearts, pray to God to uproot it. Have you self-love? Beseech the Holy Spirit to turn it out; for if you will always will to do as God wills, you must be happy. I have heard of some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water, and lifting up her hands, she said, as a blessing, "What!? all this, and Christ too?" What is "all this," compared with what we deserve? And I have read of someone dying, who was asked if he wished to live or die; and he said, "I have no wish at all about it." "But if you might wish, which would you choose?" "I would not choose at all." "But if God bade you choose?" "I would beg God to choose for me, for I would not know which to take." Oh happy state! to be perfectly acquiescent, to lie passive in His hand, and know no will but His.”

“Diversion. Sometimes, when I set to thinking the various activities of men, the dangers and troubles which they face at Court, or in war, giving rise to so many quarrels and passions, daring and often wicked enterprises and so on, I have often said the soul cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in a room. A man wealthy enough for life’s needs would never leave home to go to sea or besiege some fortress if he knew how to stay at home and enjoy it. (Page 32)”

“One good deed is more worth than a thousand brilliant theories. Let us not wait for large opportunities, or for a different kind of work, but do just the things we "find to do" day by day.”

“In the Salem of our peaceful hearts, the name of Jesus is great beyond compare: He has won our love, and He shall wear it.”

“If some talents were withheld, the Withholder knows why. He has done all things well.”

“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”

“The remarkable thing is, we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.”

“Spread out your petition before God, and then say, "Thy will, not mine, be done." The sweetest lesson I have learned in God's school is to let the Lord choose for me.”

“There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things.”

“I bless God for this retirement: I never was more thankful for any thing than I have been of late for the necessity I am under of self-denial in many respects.”

“We are a long time in learning that all our strength and salvation is in God.”

“If my life is surrendered to God, all is well. Let me not grab it back, as though it were in peril in His hand but would be safer in mine!”

“All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.”

“Mankind, by the perverse depravity of their nature, esteem that which they have most desired as of no value the moment it is possessed, and torment themselves with fruitless wishes for that which is beyond their reach.”

“To be content with even the best people, we must be contented with little and bear a great deal. Those who are most perfect have many imperfections, and we have great faults; between the two, mutual toleration becomes very difficult.”

“True rest is not that of torpor, but that of harmony; it is not refusing the struggle, but conquering in it; not resting from duty, but finding rest in it.”

“True contentment is a real, even an active, virtue - not only affirmative but creative. It is the power of getting out of any situation all there is in it.”

“All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.”